Mixed Messages – Same Mistake

I was working with a youth swimmer recently who was competing in an intense 4-day meet. I got a call from her parents on day 3 that she was having a tough time. She was nowhere near her normal times, she was exhausted, and she had to turn around and compete in another brutal race later that day, as well as being a part of more relays.

I got tired just hearing about her schedule.

Add to that, she was competing against girls 3-4 years older than her who were also elite swimmers. 

My communication with her via text and voice memo’s was simple…

1. This is hard! Yeah, you are an elite swimmer competing against other elite swimmers. Being elite is hard. You’re tired. Of course you are. You’re discouraged with your results thus far. That makes sense. And, there are many more races to go. That’s intimidating. I get it.

2. The next race. Let’s let go of how we’ve done so far, and now just focus on the next race. We don’t need to worry about the other races. We just need to rest, recover, and refocus on the next race. And, instead of thinking about the result or your time, let’s focus on 2-3 specific actions in that race that will help keep you in the moment. Let’s try to stay in the moment, in this one race.

3. Embrace it! Guess what? The others swimmers are nervous and tired too. Instead of ignoring how hard this is, let’s embrace it. This is what it means to be elite. Hoping it gets easier or is not hard only sets us up for disappointment. But if we know it’s hard, embrace it, and then just focus on swimming our best race - we release the need for it to be easy. This is what it means to be elite.

Whether or not my messages were helpful, she ended the last two days swimming well, set a PR, won an event, and was a great teammate on multiple relays. 

Then, after the event, her dad told me how she was stressed for the meet because the coaches told the team “don’t focus on your times, just focus on winning.”

I get where they were coming from. All season, they are trained to focus on staying in their lane and improving their individual times. But for the meet, don’t focus on your time, focus on winning. 

Mixed messages - same mistakes. 

Focusing on improving your time is about growth and progress. It is also the outcome. Winning the race is also about the outcome. Both of them are outcome focused. Telling to someone to just focus on “winning” is getting them to focus “harder” on the result. That’s stress.

Instead, reinforcing a message to not focus on your time, but to just get in the pool and compete and commit to your race is a much different message. Competing and committing are not outcome focused. I would go a step further as the coach and have them think about what it would look like to compete and commit to each race. And what they would probably get back from the swimmers is:

* Stay focused and don’t get distracted

* Have a strong start

* Focus on tight, quick turns

* Stretch my stride

* Power strokes

* Sacrifice for my teammates

That’s a much different message. It is not about winning (though it is), but rather focusing on specific actions and behaviors to compete and commit. 

As leaders, parents, coaches, teachers, managers – our job is to help those we lead focus on the most important behaviors – not the results. We can talk about the results, and set big goals attached to results – but then we need to drive our attention and intention to the “doing” – the behaviors and actions.

Different message - different results!

-Travis